Mary Astell

What It Covers

Mary Astell (1666-1731), called England's first feminist, argued women's minds equal men's, challenged marriage as women's only vocation, demanded educational access, and exposed hypocrisy of male philosophers championing liberty while subjugating wives.

Key Questions Answered

• •Educational Equality: Astell proposed independent women's academies funded by dowries where unmarried daughters could pursue learning as an alternative to marriage, directly challenging Protestant England's elimination of convents that left women with no options beyond matrimony.
• •Rational Soul Theory: Drawing on Cartesian mind-body dualism and Christian Platonism, Astell argued women possess identical rational souls to men—immaterial, immortal thinking substances distinct from bodies—making intellectual capacity gender-neutral and education equally necessary for both sexes.
• •Marriage Critique Framework: Astell exposed structural unfreedom in marriage where women must consent as equals but lack education to evaluate proposals rationally, face no alternatives, and enter lifelong subjection to arbitrary male authority—comparing wives' obligations to men hired to keep hogs.
• •Political Hypocrisy Argument: Astell challenged Whig philosophers like Locke who championed natural equality and resisting tyranny in politics while declaring women naturally inferior, asking why overthrowing one monarch matters when 100,000 domestic tyrants rule wives without accountability.